Press Material

Company profile

MVTec Software GmbH is a leading international manufacturer of software for machine vision used in all demanding areas of imaging like the semi-conductor industry, inspection, optical quality control, metrology, medicine, or surveillance. In particular, software by MVTec enables new automation solutions in settings of the Industrial Internet of Things.

Products: MVTec is the developer and vendor of the general purpose machine vision software products HALCON and MERLIC.

MVTec HALCON is optimized for the needs of OEMs and system integrators and allows engineers to set up their own solutions for a specific machine vision task.

Solutions: Furthermore, MVTec builds customized software solutions for machine vision – from consultancy, studies, and prototypes up to integrated products. Software solutions can be based on standard PC or embedded hardware (e.g., ARM®-based systems). Moreover, MVTec’s team has an excellent background in processing images of different kinds, including 3D, infrared, hyperspectral, and X-ray images.

Mission: To offer customers the greatest possible benefit, MVTec’s innovative work is driven by a commitment to be the number one supplier for all kinds of machine vision software technologies. MVTec focusses on in-house research and hence takes a leading role in the challenging process of understanding how machines can learn to see.

History: MVTec was founded in November 1996 as a spin-off of the Technical University of Munich and the Bavarian Research Center for Knowledge-Based Systems (FORWISS). MVTec is privately owned by the management.

Product information: HALCON

MVTec HALCON is the comprehensive standard software for machine vision with an integrated development environment (HDevelop) that is used worldwide.

It enables cost savings and improved time to market. HALCON’s flexible architecture facilitates rapid development of any kind of machine vision application.

MVTec HALCON provides outstanding performance and a comprehensive support of multi-core platforms, special instruction sets like AVX2 and NEON, as well as GPU acceleration. It serves all industries, with a library used in hundreds of thousands of installations in all areas of imaging like blob analysis, morphology, matching, measuring, and identification. The software provides the latest state-of-the-art machine vision technologies, such as comprehensive 3D vision and deep learning algorithms.

The software secures your investment by supporting a wide range of operating systems and providing interfaces to hundreds of industrial cameras and frame grabbers, in particular by supporting standards like GenICam, GigE Vision, and USB3 Vision. By default, MVTec HALCON runs on Arm®-based smart cameras and other embedded vision platforms. It can also be ported to various microprocessors/DSPs, operating systems, and compilers. Thus, the software is ideally suited for the use within embedded systems.

Product information: MERLIC

MVTec MERLIC is an all-in-one software product for quickly building machine vision applications without any need for programming.

It is based on MVTec's extensive machine vision expertise and combines reliable, fast performance with ease of use. An image-centered user interface and intuitive interaction concepts like easyTouch provide an efficient workflow, which leads to time and cost savings.

All standard machine vision tools such as calibration, measuring, counting, checking, reading, position determination, as well as 3D vision with height images are included in MVTec MERLIC. Furthermore, the software is able to execute tools in parallel, increasing overall efficiency and improving the implementation of multi-camera-setups.

MERLIC’s features are all based on the latest state-of-the-art machine vision technologies, such as matching or deep learning. The software is available for Windows-based PC and embedded platforms, making it ideally suited for use in smart cameras.

Background information on software for machine vision

What is Machine Vision?

Machine vision is deployed where camera images are not only acquired, but must also be analyzed in real time: for manufacturing, quality control, traffic control, medical technology, and surveillance.

Machine vision is a multi-purpose technology , which currently shows the highest growth in the machinery industry. Software plays the central role. High-quality software can compensate the disturbances and weaknesses of an application.

Who needs Machine Vision?

Anybody who must mass-produce goods.

Anybody who would like to automatize his production.

Anybody who wants to profit from Industry 4.0 aka the Industrial Internet of Things

Anybody who wants 100% quality for his entire production.

Anybody who strives for improvements in medical image analysis.

What is Software for Machine Vision?

Software is the core of any machine vision application. Illumination highlights an object. Cameras transform images into electronic signals. Computers process the images.

It is machine vision software, however, that analyzes and interprets this data. Machine vision software transforms image data into measurable and interpretable quantities, the basis for decisions. Here, speed, robustness, and accuracy are essential criteria.